MechChem Africa January 2018

⎪ Computer-aided engineering ⎪

Design innovation for packaging

T he fastest way to develop newprod- uct ideas into robust designs is with tightly integrated industrial design andengineeringteams.Globalteams of over 800 designers and engineers utilise simulation technology and automation at every stage of the development process to rapidly explore design variations. From first sketches to early CAD or ‘breadboard’ pro- totypes, the approach is to test early – both virtually andphysically– so as to learnquickly and reduce investment in dead-end ideas. Altair’s custom interfaces for leading com- puter aided engineering technologies allow CADteams toquickly gaindesign insight from simulation results. The software helps clients to rapidly explore a huge variety of design variations, quickly identifying the concepts that have real market potential. In today’s remarkably competitive markets, newproducts arebeing produced all the time, and packaging professionals must maintain a finebalancebetweenpackagingperformance, environmental impact and shelf appeal while keeping costs toaminimum. Amcorwanted to explore ways that it could accelerate the en- gineering and analysis tasks associated with the development of newpackaging products. Altair ProductDesign’s Enterprise Solu­ tions Group (ESG) worked with Amcor’s simulation specialists to identify where time and eventually costs could be saved within the design process. Following an investiga- tion into current design practices, the ESG suggested that Amcor could take advantage of Altair’s Impact Simulation Director (ISD). ISD automates the laborious, manual tasks associated with model setup, analysis, post-processingand reporting.When tailored to an organisation’s specific procedures and best practices, the ISD is designed to reduce development time and costs while enhancing product robustness and performance. Once implemented, the ISD was able to accelerate themodelling process by allowing the Amcor users to define mesh criteria for each part, automatically mesh the model and then quickly check mesh quality and status. Users can assign materials and properties to all the parts according to the solver-specific Altair’s technical teams routinely work with packaging specialists across the world to rapidly explore material efficient packaging shapes and forms and to reduce costs. Accelerating product testing at Amcor Rigid Plastics

Above: Altair’s Impact Simulation Director (ISD), which runs inside its Hypermesh software package, enabled Amcor to accelerate the modelling process. Right: For white goods manufacturer Mabe, their appliances’ packaging must protect from drops, impacts and other disruption events. material file as well as checking and fixing penetrations and interference for all theparts and sub-assemblies. By accelerating the crucial performance analysis stage, Amcor is now able to allow its engineers and designers to focus more on researchanddevelopmentforfutureprojects. In an industry where innovation is key, this is a big bonus for Amcor whose engineers no longer need to spend a large amount of their time modelling products and setting up analysis studies. “Thanks to the Altair Product Design team, we have been able to reduce our vir- tual testing time significantly. The ISD is fully integrated into our design process and has allowed our engineers to concentrate on re- search and development, not consumed with model building and set up tasks,” says Omkar Dole, FEA Scientist at Amcor Rigid Plastics. “Amcor and Altair ProductDesign are currently in the process of creating more re- finements to increase the range of containers that the tool can handle and we are looking forward to complete automation of the pre- processing in the future,” Dole adds. Optimisation to reduce rejection With consumers buying more and more products online, the need to design packages that canwithstand the rigours of e-commerce distribution has intensified. Altair has led the way in designing for distribution uncertainty, building on primary to tertiary packaging capability and incorporating design for ro- bustness studies during the development process. This includes multi-product type

packages and the assessment of interaction as well as the global exploration of packaging failure risk. Highly accurate predictive simulation studies are conducted on bottles, caps, as- semblies and more to discover and improve upon package performance. This includes wall thickness prediction (EBM, ISBM) and topload, squeeze, drop and torsion simula- tion studies. Teams also use simulation techniques to investigate the performance of paperboard, layer cards, pallet wraps and more to investi- gate vibration, drop and impact, compression and shock with support for thermal and cli- matic conditions and their effect on package performance. The results of these studies directly affect thedevelopment process, lead- ing to packs that better protect the product. Optimisation can be used as a visual lan- guage for industrial design and engineering to investigate concepts together. It reduces wasteful iterations, while enhancing human creativity by proposing innovative forms that can be evolved into a finished product. Altair’s simulation-driven innovation phi- losophy allows an optimal balance between material use, performance and cost for products to be found. The result is packaging solutions that are compact, material-efficient and environmentally friendly; all while of- fering outstanding product protection and maintaining the unique brand personality. q

January 2018 • MechChem Africa ¦ 23